Mixing genres is all the rage these days, but it’s too often done in a haphazard, superficial way that improves the marketing pitch rather than the finished film. Too rarely do we see films mix genres at the structural level of the film, allowing the strengths of one aesthetic to counteract the weaknesses of another, but luckily Wild Canaries is such a film. The new effort from husband and wife team Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal takes their previous mumblecore aesthetic and infuses it with the crowd pleasing intrigues of screwball comedy and murder mystery fiction, resulting in an utterly charming film greater than the sum of its parts.
Levine (who also wrote and directed) and Takal (who also produced) star as Noah and Barri, a young couple in Brooklyn who begin to argue when an elderly neighbor dies. Noah points out that it’s in no way unusual for 84-year-old women with health problems to die, but Barri, based mainly on intuition, is convinced of foul play and begins an amateur investigation alongside their roommate Jean (Alia Shawkat), a more successful lesbian who may have her sights set on Barri. Their first subject is Anthony, the son of the deceased, played by the always excellent Kevin Corrigan, who channels Christopher Walken to give a performance that walks the line between merely odd and truly suspicious. They tail Anthony, only to find him tailing the building’s landlord, Damien (Josh Ritter), a gambling, philandering artist who soon becomes another suspect. Noah is offended at the baseless suspicions of their neighbors, but against his better judgment becomes wrapped up in the sleuthing as well. Also involved is Noah’s canny ex-girlfriend Eleanor (Annie Parisse), who now dates women but still arouses Barri’s jealousy.
The mystery never takes itself too seriously, as it’s punctuated by moments of slapstick from the bumbling detectives, but the stakes are still high enough to generate moments of real suspense. The real strength of the film is that the comedy and mystery aspects are balanced with some of the same tensions and anxieties that dominated the duo’s previous film, Gabi on the Roof in July. Wild Canaries shares many of the same preoccupations – gender-fluid partner swapping, maturation anxieties, New York real estate, the struggle to balance passion and commerce – but in this film they’re relegated to the background, preventing the audience from succumbing to mumblecore malaise and making it all the more emotionally satisfying when these issues surface at unexpected and often hilarious times. For instance, where the previous film sometimes got bogged down in tiresome art talk, in Wild Canaries that dialogue is allowed to serve dual purposes - Barri asks why their landlord is making masks of all his friends and Noah responds “I don’t know! It’s a comment on the porous nature of identity or something!” – a line in keeping with Gabi’s hipster sensibility that also disguises a clue and elicits laughter.
“Wild Canaries” shows that the formulas of Old Hollywood can serve as a vessel for a unique voice, as it engages a larger audience while staying true to the intimacy and authenticity of Levine and Takal’s previous work. But more than that, it’s simply great fun, from the camerawork down to the wonderful music, and it’s hard to imagine leaving the theater without a smile.
